As INK reported in October, the UAW, the world’s wealthiest union, has been digging into its massive strike fund for years to balance the budget and pay for failed organizing attempts. Just this last January the union withdrew $60M for another last ditch effort to unionize foreign autoworkers in the South who continue to display an almost militant disinterest in joining the UAW. Yet without the dues stream of a new automaker or two, the experts have predicted the UAW will soon enter a financial death spiral.
Over this past summer the union spent millions on home visits, committee building and organizer training directed at Southern autoworkers who already earn well above Big Three Tier Two wages. Not to be deterred, the union just announced it would now shift the campaign to the dealerships of the targeted company, the target to be announced in the coming weeks. (Since early this year, UAW President Bob King has been threatening to label as “human rights violator” any foreign automaker that openly opposes unionization.) UAW VP John Aston said the union was “not actually picketing a dealership, but giving out information about why it would be important for that particular transplant to be union.”
UAW Local 1853 in Springhill, Tennessee, a main outpost of the UAW drive to conquer the South, is conducting member-training sessions on dealer picketing. Michael Herron is the local’s president. “There have been several training sessions at the union hall,” Herron said. “One of the things they talked about is that (the picketing) would be an awareness campaign at the dealerships. It’s not intended to disrupt business.” This does little to address the concerns of auto dealers trying to sell cars in this economy. Nor does it address that nagging anti-union concern for how attacking an employer’s bottom line benefits employees.
“I believe it will be an educational process,” he said about picketing dealerships. “It’s good for the UAW and allows the union to educate the American public about the value of unions and the core brand image of the UAW. The message is that when you see ‘UAW,’ you know you have a high-class workforce building a high-quality product.” Certainly those building foreign cars in the American South will appreciate being educated on how the UAW sees them from the start – as not part of a high-class workforce and not building high-quality product.
The UAW also announced it will begin picking 75 Hyundai dealerships this week but as part of a global labor response to the firing of a South Korean whistleblower, not as part of an organizing campaign. In fact UAW Michele Martin told Auto News the union’s organizing target was specifically not Hyundai.
